[BNM] [OT] Re: just the facts

[Dave Phelan]

On 8/2/06, richard willis <m81l1ngl1sts at richtextformat.org> wrote:
> last night i imagined a news site where there were no stories, no comment,
> just facts and a limited amount of explanatory text. for instance, let's
> take israel/hisbollah:
> i want just the unadulterated facts about the war AND its relationship to
> other current wars and other facts. so...

Interesting. Isn't wikipedia good for this sort of thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbullah#Armed_strength
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict

> say, a page showing a map of the world with ALL the global, known, current
> conflicts shown on it as clickable areas. select a 'war' to get more
> details about that particular conflict, but as much as possible, pure
> facts. so: length of war, number of dead/dying/wounded, size of military,
> buildings destroyed, land taken/lost, populations involved, GDP etc. etc.
> with text being limited to some short, purely objective terms such as
> given reason for the conflict (both sides), known allies, religion of
> combattants etc.

The problem with this is that what you see as hard facts are matters
of bias. Armed strength, casualities in a war, extent of damage are
all difficult to independantly verify without a large number of
observers. Imagine Hezbullah exagerating the extent of Israeli
military casualities, while Israel limits that number, while feasibly
inflating the civilian casualities. This might not even be deliberate
manipulation, but different accounting methods - Hezbullah regarding
all Israeli infrastructure as a military target perhaps.

> then give options for users to compare facts that they choose to compare.
> for instance, the amount of people that died in belgian hospitals today
> cross-referenced against the amount of congolese soldiers lost in combat
> today and so on and so forth.

Sort of top trumps for warzones?

> no journalists on the site but perhaps wikis/blogs so that everyone can
> raise/comment on new/existing issues, allowing news 'stories' to be as
> diverse as your standard 'should israel call a ceasefire?' to the less
> widely reported 'more people die on roads in britain daily than ever did
> at chernobyl' and beyond.

So you want comment, just not necessarily informed comment..?

> does anything like this exist? cos if it did it'd be no more
> bbc/sky/cbn/reuters for me, no way. if it did, maybe i could actually see
> 'the news' for once as opposed to 'the filtered bias'.

Globally, the BBC has a pretty good reputation for unbiasd reporting,
and 'strives' towards balance. But I guess bias is in the eye of the
beholder, especially in the political arena, where cold hard facts are
rare.

One thought: maybe the UN Commissioner for Refugees has the sort of
detail you seek?

Dave Ph
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